A tribute to and catalogue of the works of Alexander "Hugin" Wieser, founder of ambient black metal band Uruk Hai and many other side-projects, including Hrossharsgrani, Hrefnesholt, Elisabetha, B-Machina, Ceremony of Innocence and more!
Here you will find my thoughts on his work and details on the releases as drawn from items in my personal collection, forming a fuller catalogue of his work than is currently available elsewhere online

Wednesday, 10 January 2018

WHW - update

Band:BONEMACHINE

Title: WHW [Winterhilfswerk]Reason for update: Here’s one of the 64 box-sets for this 2007 release

Christmas is famously the time for giving, and amongst the presents littering the floor of Castle Nazgul this year was this little box, bought by Nazgul for himself and saved until now as a treat to temper the January blues.

The original review of WHW pretty much said all that needed to be said about this compilation, released in 2007 on the German SkullLine label. It’s a 2CD set of various remixed and unique songs in the neofolk/ambient/industrial/dark folk
categories, and was released to celebrate the label’s first birthday. The title “WHW”, if you’re interested, stems from the Winterhilfswerk which as far as I can gather was a charitable organisation in the Third Reich era that collected food and fuel for
the poor and needy. Their slogan was ‘none shall starve or freeze’, which still has currency in many parts of the world over 80 years later.

And as that review noted there were a total of 200 copies of this release issued by SkullLine, of which 64 only came in this box-set format. Now, to be brutally honest, Nazgul hadn’t really been looking all that hard to find a copy of the
box given that the slim-line 2CD version plugged the necessary gap in the Bonemachine side of the Castle Nazgul collection. But then, whilst idly browsing online for something else entirely, this copy appeared for a good price (partly because there's a bump/hole in the box, as you can see from the photos) and that, as they say, was that! A short
hop over the Channel from Belgium and here it is, scratching the itch for the completist in me but otherwise destined to sit on a shelf for a long time I suspect!

I was initially tempted to do a photo montage of unwrapping the parcel and revealing the contents, until common sense took over and the conclusion was drawn that (a) it would be far easier to show you a stock image of the contents, as they
are the same from box to box, and (2) the value will be greatly retained if I don’t start mucking about with it, for re-wrapping it with brown paper and string and stickers/stamps is a recipe for disaster if Nazgul has a hand in it.

So what we have in the image below is SkullLine’s own photograph of the insides of the set (hence the garish red background!) and I can tell you that as well as the same 2CD slim-line release you also receive a handmade shirt (available
in sizes Large and XL only I think, so the size within this set remains a mystery), a traditional old style parcel box with stamp + string (presumably as you see in war films of the period), plus an ear of corn (obviously) and an insert card. The stamp, as
you will notice, has the mock value ‘64’ to represent the edition number, which is a nice touch.

You could, if suitably inclined, purchase your own copy as I notice that SkullLine still have a couple left in their online shop.

And a belated but nonetheless sincere Happy New Year 2018 to all Honour and Darkness followers!